My printer is out of ink ( ), but I should be able to print this out at my in-laws' place in a few days. I think I'll skip the card-backs and save a bit of ink and paper. Not sure how I'll do the tokens... I don't know what sort of supplies they'll have available.

Hi Nate,

The Antigen tokens--the round ones--are the same size as pennies, so you can cut them out and use a gluestick to glue them to pennies. Just make sure you glue them all to the "heads" side of the penny so that the backs all look alike when they are face down.

If you can get your hands on 16 nickles you could glue the Antibody Proteins--the square ones--to them. They are bigger and they will fit the whole symbol image on them. And you can tell them apart quickly when setting up the game.

Whooooaaa! This is happening waaaaay too fast for me. The first person to respond is the game designer, and now the 2nd person to respond is the publisher! I literally typed up these rules a few hours ago and posted em.

I'm pretty sure there are people on this site who would kill to be in that position. Not metaphorically, mind - literally...kill a person...with their bare hands...

So it had been six months since I emailed Victory Point Games my rule set for my CDC solitaire board game and I had not gotten a response, so I decided to send them one more email. I basically asked if it was typical not to get a response at all when doing a submission. Here was the first response:

Noelle wrote:

John,

We're really sorry about that. The beginning of this year has been very busy for us since we moved, and during that time we have gotten a laser cutting machine and some other new machines here at VPG which Nathan has been busy learning as well as teaching everyone in between sorting out our game release schedule and game development.

I will be sure he gets a chance to look at this as soon as possible. We really appreciate your patience.

- Noelle

And here is the second response:

Nathan wrote:

Hello John,

I'm really sorry about the delay. I do remember your game, and I know its something we would want to look into doing. I just got swept away with all my other tasks and your game kind of blipped off my radar for a while. You have my attention now. I'll create a test kit from your rules/files and get it on the table this Saturday. After that I should be able to give you some good feedback and move the process forward.

-Nathan

So I sent them all the PDF files need to print out and make a working prototype of the game.

I had the chance to sit down and play CDC this weekend. I did have some issues with the rules, and I think that Dr. Eppel was a little overpowered, but overall this was a very well put together game. I ended up playing it 3 times.

I'll probably take this on myself for development.

As for Dr. Eppel, I think double funding may be a bit much. How would you feel about a static increase, like say +2 funding when destroying an antigen?

Gedin wrote:

Hi Nathan,

I’m glad that you were willing to play it 3 times this weekend. Did you lose any of the 3 games you played?

It’s been months since I’ve played the solitaire version of this game so I will have to reacquaint myself with it this week. I think a static increase such as the +2 of Dr Eppel sounds like a good change to keep the game challenging. Too much funding can certainly make it easier to win.

I am very flexible and willing to work with you on any rules/mechanics/cards changes. I also have some changes I made to the multiplayer version that could be synced back to the solo version to make it better.

Soooo…where do we go from here?

Regards,John Gibson

Nathan wrote:

It was fun. The first was played wrong, as I missed the part of the rules that said you could only have one Dr. so... that game isn't a good judge of difficulty. It was very easy I think I won by turn 6. The second game I lost. I think it was around turn 7 or 8. I ran out of money. The third game Dr. Eppel came into play again. This time the game was won by turn 8.

From here, I'll make a pass at your rules. See if I can make it so we use less subcases, and generally clean up the readability of them. We'll also need to get an artist to look at this game at some point, but I tend to delay that as long as possible so we don't "marry ourselves" to anything and fear changing it. Eventually it will go to out of house testing. At that point we will likely make a few tweaks, and clarifications, and fix anything that the testers destroy on contact. Then proofing and release. But, first things first, I'll take a crack at those rules and get them sent back to you for consideration.

Here's another update on the progress of my game with VPG. I sent them an email today:

gedin wrote:

Hi Nathan,

Just thought I'd touch base and see if you are still interested in developing Biosafety Level 4.

Regards,John Gibson

And here was the quick response:

Nathan wrote:

I am so interested in your game that I'm probably going to put off several of my own designs to find the time to work on it. Unfortunately I do need to clear a few other projects first. I also want to get some of our in house digital developers to look at this but they have their own back catalog to go through so no promises there.

It was very gratifying to hear that. I know it can take years to publish a board game so I understand it will take time to work through the process.

Allow me to introduce you to Joshua Neiman. Joshua has been looking at your game, CDC Biosafety Level 4. He has some ideas and would like to help you develop the game. This would be his first time developing another designers game but based on the discussions I've had with him I have every confidence he will give your game all the attention it deserves. I will be using this as an opportunity to teach him the VPG development process so I will still be involved in the overall process but I'd like for him to ultimately be the Developer.

Joshua, meet John. Its Johns game you've been noodling around with over the past few days. Please let him know what your thoughts are on the games current state and where you'd like to see things go.

We're all quite excited about this game here in the VPG offices; the mechanics are tight and it's a lot of fun while still maintaining a good degree of challenge. The only things that we're hoping to change from our end is the inclusion of a larger story/narrative, which might push a couple mechanics in a slightly different direction but would for the most part keep the actual play of the game the same; we'll talk more on that later, though, since first we'll mock up a loose concept of the narrative elements so you can see what we're thinking about. Alan Emrich, our boss, should be contacting you sometime soon to talk a bit about it and then you and I will get down to things.

If you wanted to send over any of the changes you were thinking about (or may have implemented already in new versions) feel free; we'd love to see your new ideas.

Part of me is not really believing this...how could anybody be excited about a game I made?!?! I'm just some shmoe who loves playing games and decided to try his hand at making a few. And here I am...a company where people think the mechanics are tight and it's a lot of fun...sigh...

More progress on the development front. Alan Emrich, the publisher of Victory Point Games, emailed me next, offering me their “standard rich and famous” contract. I readily agreed!!!

Alan wrote:

Hey, John… Alan Emrich here.

Your game caught my eye on the playtest tables. Interestingly both the boardgame AND app game developers took a shine to it, which is always a good thing.

I see you’ve met Nathan, our producer, and Josh, who we’ll have lead the development of your game. My job as publisher is to make sure that, when it gets to market, it gets those high ratings that VPG games are famous for among the enthusiasts on Boardgame Geek and that it’s well-marketed.

I noticed a very solid set of core mechanics creating a great “puzzle to solve” via gameplay, but there was little to really “hook” or sell to the customer by way of story development or characters. That’s something that we do pretty well here, so putting that bit of polish around your design should deliver a very well-received product when it ships.

Please let us know if you’re on board with us developing and publishing your game, and we’ll get the “standard rich and famous” contract out to you and really get the ball rolling. You’ll be in steady touch with your developer at that point (Josh) and will get the see the evolution of your game “before your eyes” and be a part of the process.

Looking back to the start of things here, I had a deja vu moment with my first game design (which VPG has done a superb job with) back in 2010.

Best of luck in the future.

Thanks Steve!

I just got another email from Josh with some of the proposed changes. Holy cow! They are really going to put some flesh on the bones of my game. They seemed to be moving full steam ahead on the development front.